Welcome! Thank you very much for being a user of our software products. This documentation provides a brief introduction to both Cranium, our physical property estimation software, and Synapse, our chemical product design software. Links to more detailed documentation are provided in the content below.

Throughout this online documentation you will see colored section headings. These headings mean the following:

Cranium provides you with powerful capabilities for storing, managing and analyzing physical property data and generating physical property estimates. Using Cranium you can enter data on chemicals, mixtures and references. You can estimate physical properties using group contribution, equation-oriented and parameter-based estimation techniques. XY graphs, triangular graphs and reports can be generated to analyze and summarize physical property values. Cranium also exchanges physical property values with many other chemical software programs including structure drawing tools and process simulators.

Cranium can estimate more than thirty physical properties for both pure chemicals and mixtures. All estimation techniques can be viewed, edited, copied and pasted. You can easily modify the estimation techniques distributed in one of MKS's knowledge bases or create your own estimation technique. New groups contributions and new parameter values can be easily added to an estimation technique.

Cranium’s goal is to provide you with powerful capabilities for storing, managing and analyzing physical property data and estimates. To accomplish this goal, Cranium uses five types of documents:

• Knowledge Base Document: these are the core documents used to store information about chemicals, mixtures, estimation techniques, structural groups, elements and references. Cranium uses these documents to mange physical property data and estimate physical properties.
• XY Graph Document: these documents are used to generate and manage two dimensional graphs.
• Triangular Graph Document: these documents are used to generate and manage triangular graphs. Triangular graphs are often useful when analyzing composition dependent physical property values.
• Bookmark Document: these documents enable you to store lists of entities, i.e., bookmarks. These entities can then be quickly accessed.
• Report Document: these documents enable you to generate reports that can be printed, exported to word processors or posted on the internet.

Click on any of the above links for detailed documenation on Cranium's capabilities. In addition see documentation for Cranium Introduction for a quick introduction to Cranium using step-by-step examples.

Please also visit our YouTube Channel for vidoes demonstrating how to use Cranium.

Synapse provides you with all the capabilities of Cranium, i.e., powerful capabilities for storing, managing and analyzing physical property data and generating physical property estimates. In addition, Synapse has the capabilties to select and design chemicals and mixtures that satify sets of physical property and molecular structure constraints. For example, you can ask Synapse to design new refrigerants that possess specific vapor pressures and heat capacities and whose structure contains fluorine atoms and double bonds.

In addition to designing novel chemicals and mixtures, Synapse can also select chemicals and mixtures that satisfy a set of physcal property and molecular structure constraints. This a powerful tool for identifying new applications for existing products.

Synapse’s goal is to provide you with powerful capabilities for selecting and designing new chemical products, both pure chemicals and mixtures. To accomplish this goal, Synapse uses all the document types used by Cranium, in addition to four other types:

• Chemical Selection Document: these documents are used to select existing chemicals from a knowledge base whose physical properties and molecular structures satisfy a set of selection constraints.
• Mixture Selection Document: these documents are used to select existing mixtures from a knowledge base whose physical properties and components satisfy a set of selection constraints.
• Chemical Design Document: these documents are used to design new molecular structures that satisfy a set of physical property and structural design constraints.
• Mixture Design Document: these documents are used to design new mixtures that satisfy a set of physical property and compositional design constraints.

Click on any of the above links for detailed documenation on Cranium's capabilities. In addition see documentation for Synapse Introduction for a quick introduction to Synapse using step-by-step examples.

Please also visit our YouTube Channel for vidoes demonstrating how to use Synapse.

Each Cranium and Synapse document is designed to be analogous to a common reference book. Each document is divided into chapters. Each chapter contains a number of pages. Information for a single chemical, mixture, technique, graph, bookmark, chemical design, etc., is presented on each single page. Finding information in Cranium and Synapse therefore typically involves “changing” chapters and "turning" pages.

1	Documents are divided into chapters - each tab at the top of the document's windows represents a difference chapter.
2	Each chapter is divided into pages. All the information for an entity, e.g., a chemical, mixture, technique, reference, mixture design, etc., is stored on a single page.

Each document is displayed in a window which is divided into several "panes". The chapter pane, located at the window’s top, displays tabs representing each chapter contained in the current document. Clicking the left mouse button on any tab activates that chapter displaying information from one of its pages in the window.

1	Chapter Pane: each document is divided into chapters.
2	Identifier Pane: typically displays the name of the chemical, mixture, group, design, etc. (Note: the Summary Chapter, typically the first chapter of a document, does not have an Identifier Pane.)
3	Data Pane: large window displaying data, estimates, graphs, notes, etc. on the current entity. (The Data Pane typically scrolls.)
4	Status Pane: displays the current page number and bookmark information.

Immediately below the chapter pane is the window’s identifier pane. This pane displays the identifier, typically a name, acronym, or abbreviation, which Cranium and Synapse use to find each entity.

The next pane is the data pane. This large, central window displays the most of the values for each entity. The data pane is typically organized into sections with bold headings describing the presented information.

The status pane is located at the bottom of the window. The left half of the status pane presents the current page number as well as the total number of pages contained in the chapter. The right half of the status pane displays the bookmark being used by the current document.

Each Data Pane is divided into one or more Sections. Sections display data, estimates and information about one or more properties. The properties are typically related. For example, the image below a shows sections for phase transition enthalpy properties, optical properties and temperature dependent properties.

1	Phase Transition Enthalpies Section: displays data, estimates and units for three properties.
2	Optical Properties Section: displays data and estimates for two properties. (Note that both refractive indices are dimensionless values so the units are displayed as empty boxes.)
3	Temperature Dependent Section: displays data, estimates, curves and equations for several temperature dependent properties. Each of these different values types is selected by clicking the left mouse button on the edit control to the right of the 'Property:' label. window displaying data, estimates, graphs,

Sections are "pieces" used in reports, printing and throughout this documentation. For example, when you print a document you first select which sections to print.

Each Section is divied into one or more Fields. A Field typically displays information for one physical property or attribute. For example, the four fields in the Critical Properties Section each display values for the critical temperature, critical pressure, critical volume and critical compressibility. The following image highlights two of these fields.

1

Critical temperature field

2

Critical compressibility field

As a second example, the Design Parameters Section contains four fields specifying the minimum number of design groups, the maximum number of design groups, the minimum number of rings and the maximum number of rings. The following image highlights two of these fields.

1

Minimum number of groups field

2

Maximum number of rings field

Fields can contain one labels, buttons, edit boxes, tables and graphs. We call these items "controls". For example, the following image shows the Critical Pressure Field which contains four controls.

1	Field Label: each field will display one or more labels to identify the physical property being displayed and other relevant information. (This field's label, Pc, is covered by the number 1.)
2	Datum or Data Entry Control: displays a data value or values for the field's property.
3	Estimate or Estimates Control: displays an estimated value or values for the field's property.
4	Units Control: displays the units in which data and estimates are shown.

We often refer to all types of controls that accept input as "edit controls". Thus the Data, Estimates and Units controls described above can all be called edit controls.

An edit control is typically a rectangular region used to display data, estimates, units, molecular structures, graphs, etc. Edit controls always display blue text if they contain values than can be changed. Clicking the left mouse button anywhere within an control will activate an edit dialog.

Cranium and Synapse use dialogs to add and remove data from a document. For example, clicking the left mouse button on the Chemical Chapter’s critical pressure data control, denoted by the number 2 in the image above, activates the following data edit dialog. (Note that the various labels, tables, edit boxes, comboboxes, etc., contained in a dialog are also referred to as controls.)

Using the dialog, you enter a value for the critical pressure, the units of measure, a reference typically indicating the source of the data, and comments. When you are finished and press the OK button Cranium checks your entered data’s validity and then updates the knowledge base.

Using this field-control-dialog approach for entering values has several advantages:

• Cranium and Synapse can execute verification tests before accepting a data point. If an error is found the dialog can remain active allowing the offending value to be corrected.
• A data point is entered into the knowledge base only after all associated values, e.g., temperature, pressure, datum and reference, are entered. This ensures knowledge base consistency.
• Data entry dialogs can contain additional controls and tools to facilitate data entry. For example, pressing the List button in the previously shown dialog shows all the references contained in the current knowledge base.

The dialogs used throughout Cranium and Synapse will have the controls for required values highlighted in yellow. For example, in the Temperature Series dialog shown below, the yellow highlighting indicates that you must enter values into the Constant Pressure, Starting Temperature and Ending Temperature controls.

The units in which data are entered (original units) and the units in which they are displayed (current units) in a field do not need to match. We recommend that all data be entered in their original units, e.g., the units reported in source reference document.

The last chapter of every document is the References chapter. Almost every value you enter into Cranium and Synapse has an accompanying reference and comment. Both applications provide numerous methods for quickly identifying and viewing associated references. (See documentation for the Reference Chapter for more details.)

We recommend that you always enter a reference for each datum entered into Cranium and Synapse. Thus, before you begin entering values, we recommend you create a reference for the data source. We also recommend you create a general "personal" reference. For example, you will often see data with the reference "MKS Calculation or Derivation". This reference indicates that the value originated here at Molecular Knowledge Systems.

In addition to editing fields and utilizing dialogs, the other common operation in Cranium and Synapse is to run commands found on command menus. The applications' menubar provides numerous commands for navigation, bookmarking, file operations, units conversion, etc. See documentation on Common Commands for details.

In addition to these common commands, each chapter has a custom list of commands found on the menubar's Commands menu. For example, the following menus are from the Chemicals Chapter, the References Chapter and the Graphical Chemical Design chapter.

Topic	Description
Getting Started using Synapse	provides a quick tour of Synapse's capabilities including examples of chemical product design.
Getting Started using Cranium	provides a quick tour of Cranium's capabilities including a discussion of structure editing.
Estimating Chemical Properties	a short video demonstrating how to estimate the physical properties of chemicals using either Synapse or Cranium.
Estimating Mixture Properties	a short video demonstrating how to estimate the physical properties of mixtures using either Synapse or Cranium.